


A Red Reprieve

by Ohgodimdoingthisarenti



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 03:29:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15234357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohgodimdoingthisarenti/pseuds/Ohgodimdoingthisarenti
Summary: Octavia has lost sight of what she fought for in the conclave all those years ago. Niylah reminds her that a fragile repose can be found in the hardest of places.





	A Red Reprieve

Octavia sauntered forward, eyes trained on some far wall, sharp and insistent enough that it felt it would burn if she dared move them. She had to look keen, had to look like she was balancing impossible problems behind her dull green eyes, like it was easy. The bystanders likely thought she was calculating something, her visage only falling forward while her thoughts raced, like she wasn’t truly there. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

No, she was present there in every single way. Her arms fastened at her sides, unkempt nails plucking at a stray thread at her belt loop, doing everything she could to keep herself from shaking. Her eyes trailed the bolts and rivets on the bunker wall, memorizing each striation, each tube, each subtle interruption and deviation from the original framework. There were quite a few now, whether it be a chip in the steel or a bit of graffiti, she studied it. It reminded her every moment she spent in this place, every moment she had to remain beneath the world, every moment she spent away from her brother. She doted upon these moments, archiving them so that she could make up for the future. For every moment she spent down here killing, she’d spend a moment above nurturing, for every moment she spent in cruelty she’d spend a moment loving. However, as time went on, she found she may no longer be capable of these acts of simple kindness.

Something was changing in her, something fundamental, like her hands were now poison, and where her lips once parted to breathe in air they now unleashed fire. The Octavia Blake that she knew was gone, and she now traversed the halls of this place in skin that didn’t quite fit, in skin that would harden in defense of the earth’s morning breeze, skin that wouldn’t let in the satisfaction in no matter what.

At her side stood Indra, arms crossed behind her back, her gait stalwart, eyes determined. There was something protective in her stead. She stood a bit closer than most would find necessary, as if she was always preparing to throw her body between Octavia and a hail of bullets. Octavia would find herself drifting away, hoping that, when the time came, there just wouldn’t be enough time for Indra to catch up. Indra would always find her way back to her, though, and after a while Octavia didn’t fight it anymore.

Parallel to Indra was Miller, and tailing behind them was Cooper. The four paused at an intersecting hall, waiting as a stocky man drug a corpse out of sight, a brush stroke of viscera acting as a trail of breadcrumbs leading back to the arena. Octavia didn’t even watch this one’s trial. Suddenly, she wasn’t looking at the wall anymore.

He was young, not young as in an adolescent but young in a way that Octavia herself still was, young as in forming, young as in flawed, young in a way that made Octavia wish so deeply that he hadn’t lost. It was needless and stupid to wish that a dead person was alive, but Octavia still did, just like she still wished that Lincoln was alive. She wondered if things would be the same if he was. Would he rule beside her, would the two of them be the pillars on which Wonkru would stand? Would she still have to carry that burden alone, would she have to be Atlas, holding what was left of this world on her shoulders? She would pull at that particular thread for hours, tugging and tugging until she herself was unraveled over the cool cement floor. She once had a guilty thought, a thought that disgusted her more than any of the other depraved things she had been driven to.

“At least he’s not alive to hate the person that I’ve become.”

Octavia pulled her gaze from the floor, pivoting the corner aggressively, ignoring the gore under her heels. She felt a shift in Indra, and sure enough she was watching her from her peripherals, shooting concerns with her expression. Octavia, try as she might, would never understand how Indra knew her distress. Even a little thing such as this, a puddle in a pool of greater trauma, registered to her.

There were many things she wanted to ask her conservator. She wanted to ask her about the depths of her disapproval, and her longing for a girl that had long since died. “Does it hurt to know that the girl you molded is dead? Does it itch in you like it itches in me that my best days are gone, do you mourn the light in me?”

Indra would never admit the flashes of disgust she felt. She’d bat them away, but the look in Octavia’s eyes and the iciness in her throat when she became “Blodreina” always twisted her gut. Still, Indra would never abandon her. She’d simply wait for the small affirmations that humanity in her ward still existed, little peeks like that stumble in her step when she saw the dead boy being dragged over the floor, and she’d hold onto them, repeating them in her head when Octavia dipped into a particularly bad place. Sometimes, walking beside the girl was like walking with a corpse, watching it fall into disarray, trying to pick up the pieces to no avail. Once again, she’d bat the thoughts away.

Octavia pardoned Miller and Cooper to their adjacent quarters with a simple wave of her hand and nod of her head, and the two scuttled away. The two remaining women neared the heavy, steel door to the youngers domicile, releasing a collective breath in the relative solitude, stripping things that they hadn’t even known they had equipped, neither addressing the ease.

“Do you know who that boy was?” Octavia asked, trying to keep her voice flat.

“Do you want to know his name, or do you want to know what he did?” she answered, her tone a harsh implication.

“What did he do?” she replied with a sigh.

“He stole rations,” she explained. There was an accusation in her face. The look was familiar.

“Well,” Octavia began, “imagine what would happen if we didn’t punish him. Rations are called rations because we only have exactly enough to split between us. Hell, we have less than enough. Every time someone steals rations, they’re stealing the breath from someone’s lungs. And it’s not just one person. It’s all of us.”

“So they’re dealing death in hypotheticals,” she deadpanned, “is that worse than dealing death in absolutes, out there in that arena?”

“Indra-”

“Please Blodreina, while your out here saving humanity, remember not to make it into something not worth saving.”

Octavia grimaced, words dancing on her tongue, none worth saying. “Thank you for your words. I’ll take them to heart,” she decided upon saying. Indra nodded, her fingers brushing over her protege matted tresses, tracing her taut jaw.

“Take more than that into your heart,” she practically pleaded. “For your sake.”

The girl stared, and then nodded simply. The two parted, Octavia stumbling into her room, body deflated. She tossed herself onto a nearby cot, unraveling her clothes, tossing them haphazardly over the floor. Slowly, she eased her head onto the slab, eyes snapping shut in exhaustion.

For a while, her mind was drowning in waves of blackness. Her consciousness was subdued, just darkness undulating, like the ocean lapping at the land. She slipped hard into her slumber, almost excited for the calm reprieve.

It didn’t last.

All at once light poured in, and then a barrage of things, mostly in reds. Blood and flesh and fire, the paint she smeared over her forehead, tissue sliced carefully for consumption. There were explosions, loud and soft, the barrel of a gun, bullet slicing through skin and skull, Lincoln colliding against a puddle and water sailing through the air. There were people tusseling in the arena, the sound of screams and cheers and cries. A taste lingered in her mouth, one that she was disturbingly accustomed to.

“Would Bellamy still love me if he knew that I know exactly what a human being tastes like?”

That thought jolted her. She sat upright, her head throbbing at the impact of it all. She was breathing hard, her heart beating like the patter of a rabbit’s feet. Her eyes darted over the room, blurry with already teeming tears. She swallowed, burying her head into her knees. She slapped at her heads, trying to knock the thoughts from her brain.

“I wish I was under the floorboards again. I wish I was back in the conclave. I wish I would’ve lost. I wish Luna would have won. If this is what we look like now, we’d be better off dead.”

She jumped onto her feet, almost knocking the cot over. She paced and paced, her feet slapping against the cool floor. She kicked about stray clothes and papers and a weapon or two. She sucked in a cold breath, tossing on some rags before rushing out the door. She darted forward, not acknowledging her destination but still running, tugging at the invisible tether that bound her to one woman.

Frantically she pounded at the steel, her fists purpling, bleating a rash red. The door opened quickly and she stepped through without thought, nearly colliding with it’s occupant.

“Octavia?” Niylah grumbled, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Are you-” she paused, turning to see that the woman had already found her place on the floor, head once again buried into her knees. “What happened?”

“Tell me we’re worth saving,” the woman said, inflections careful, rehearsed.

“Who?” Niylah asked softly, kneeling before her. She reached forward, cradling the sobbing girl’s chin, forcing her wandering eyes upon her.

“Us,” she gestured vaguely. “The people I’ve made us into. Tell me we’re good, and that we should be aloud on the surface, and that we won’t be a plague on this damn earth if we get there. Tell me we shouldn’t rot down here.”

Niylah shook her head, scooting forward until she could feel Octavia’s labored breath on her collarbone. “You haven’t made anyone into anything,” she contested. “Why- why are you asking me this?”

“Because I see you, talking about the things you’ve seen, old collections and wandering people, relics and trades and it reminds me of a time when I had hope in people,” she stammered. “It reminds me why I wanted to share this place. You’re like a memory bank of the way things were, you hold all of the values that I fought for.”

Niylah sighed, shaking her head. “Things were never that good,” she said after a moment of long silence.

“What?” Octavia asked.

“You think you invented violence? You think we didn’t fight and die for our mistakes before you came around? You saved us, none of us would be alive if it wasn’t for you.”

“I forced you to live in a bunker. I forced you to fight to uphold my laws. I forced you to do things to survive that no one should ever have to do,” she almost whispered. “Your deaths would have been cleaner and quicker than most if I had just stayed out of it. I condemned you.”

Niylah blinked, taken aback. “You gave us a chance,” she said, “you gave us a chance to be happy. Even if we aren’t right now, even if we won’t be for a long time, even if it takes years, we have a change to live and love and learn, there is a galaxy of things that lay before us. The world was going to take it from us and you gave it back.”

Octavia shook her head. “Maybe it wasn’t my place to give it back.”

“Maybe it wasn’t,” Niylah said. “You’re not an apostle that delivered us from our doom or anything, and it’s not like you plucked the stars from the sky and gave them to us,” she said with a sad giggle, “but you keep fighting for us. You fight for us every day. You united us under one banner because you knew we wouldn’t survive if we remained divided. You gave people who broke your laws a chance to fight for their lives, and if they succeed you welcome them back to the life they earned with open arms. Everything so that we can be happy one day. You gave us a way to survive so we can see it.”

“What if we never do?” she asked.

“Does it matter?” Niylah retorted. “You’ll never be able to control that. This,” Niylah gestured, “is what you can. What we can. In case you’ve forgotten.”

“How are we going to live with what we’ve done?” she murmured.

“Like this,” the woman said, taking Octavia’s wavering hand and pressing it firm against her chest. Her heart pulsed against her palm, steady and strong, uninterrupted. “We don’t have to try very hard at all,” she joked.

Octavia blinked hard, shocked somehow at the woman’s warmth. She leaned against her touch, closed her eyes as she weaved her fingers through her chestnut hair, listened to her as she hummed something soft and melodic into her ear. “You can sleep here tonight,” the woman said, pulling Octavia onto her feet, guiding her forward.

“Will you sleep with me?” she asked as she was eased onto the paper thin cot. Niylah paused, staring down at the girl whose dark eyes begged for acceptance. She gave her a nod, sliding beneath the covers, falling into a tangle without much thought at all. The two grabbed at each other’s bare skin, starved for touch of any kind, no matter how innocuous. Octavia’s head burrowed into Niylah’s chest, carving out her place there like an animal finding shelter. Her fingers, calloused and dirty, pulled through her ashy blonde hair. They smelled like copper and sweat but neither had remembered smelling anything better.

Octavia suddenly remembered what all of the carnage was for. She then knew that she would fight the rest of her life if it meant she could live one more moment here.


End file.
